Long, Long Article On BNSF In Montana -- September 28, 2015

This is a must-read, must-bookmark article. Often these articles disappear over time. The Billings Gazette has a long, long story on BNSF, CBR, and the agricultural, coal, and automobile shipping backlog.

Some data points:

BNSF is spending $160 million in Montana this year to expand rail capacity, and is also hiring 450 people in the state. The swelling workforce shows in Forsyth, where outside Fransen’s depot office, the company parking lot is full and the pay is well above average for the area. Starting pay for BNSF conductors is $60,000 a year after 13 weeks of training. The only prerequisite is a high school diploma. It doesn’t take too many workers with that size salary to stimulate the economy of a small town like Terry where rail construction is underway.

And this:

That’s a lot of investors with wagers on BNSF’s iron horse to not only show, but win. No community has more on the line than Shelby, which launched its rail industrial park a few years ago after turbines for North Central Montana’s wind farms began rolling into town. Shelby gets 45 to 55 trains a day, according to Mayor Larry Bonderud. The mayor would like to see the number of trains increase to 65, where it was before the Great Recession.

“We’re seeing more agriculture commodities, more value-added ag commodities,” Bonderud said. “We’re seeing coal come up from the south and being interchanged to the Canadian Pacific,” which crossed the border and picks up loads in Shelby.

Bonderud said you could see the rail traffic picking up if you knew what to look for. Not only because oil tankers and grain cars were rolling down the track, but also because recession-idled shipping container cars began leaving the seldom-used side tracks across Montana, which were lousy with the specialty cars used to move shipping containers between Chicago and the West Coast.

Bonderud said BNSF is making the necessary track improvements, none bigger than a 60-mile double-track stretch between Glasgow and Minot, ND, that allows incoming and outgoing oil and agriculture trains to travel more freely.

Remember that Dickinson Press story telling us that more CBR would result in longer waits at railway crossings? Here, we are told that prior to the Great Recession as many as 65 trains a day rolled through the northern tier. Now, it's only 45 to 55 trains a day. Something tells me ....

Imagine how bad this would all be if there was no "war on coal."

It's a long, long article. Many, many story lines. 

Regular readers know that I have the highest respect for BNSF and anyone "blaming" BNSF for these problems either has an agenda, or doesn't understand the business.

And it's the folks in Minnesota, Iowa, and Nebraska, farm states as far I know, that still favor CBR over oil pipelines -- having killed the Keystone and looking to kill the Sandpiper.

The last chokepoint for BNSF across the northern tier is a small river in Idaho. The small town located near the river doesn't want BNSF to put in a second bridge to complete the double-track project across the northern tier (previously reported). They cite ... environmental concerns.

Crockett's Theme, Jan Hammer

I see Europe won its third straight Ryder Cup. Did anyone even watch? I see that Jeff Gordon won at Dover today. "Chase for the Sprint Cup" (from wiki):

Under the new system (2014), the Chase field is expanded to 16 drivers. But unlike previous versions of the Chase, drivers are eliminated from title contention as the Chase progresses.

The bottom four of the top-16 drivers are eliminated from title contention after the third race (Dover) in what is called the "Challenger Round", as points are reset to 3,000 points. [That's what happened today.]

Then the new bottom four are eliminated after the sixth Chase race (Talladega) in the "Contender Round," while the points all reset to 4,000. The "Eliminator Round" involves axing the drivers 5th-8th in the points after the penultimate race at Phoenix, and the top four drivers have their point totals reset to 5,000 so that they are tied for the final race at Homestead-Miami for the title run.

Of these four drivers, the driver with the best finish at Homestead is then the crowned series champion.